Médecins Sans Frontières - WEBCLIP: Mohammad, Sudanese minor, now safely in UK (ENG)

Unique Identifier Code / URN MSF175979

Date taken / Date Recorded 01/09/2016 12:00 AM

Country United Kingdom

Commissioning section MSF-FRANCE

Photographer / videographer / producer Mohammad Ghannam

Copyright MSF

Usage Rights (MSF) Social Media

Formal Consent Copy available no

Editor's rating ★★★★★ (C)

Video format h264 (Constrained Baseline) (avc1 / 0x31637661)

Duration 4m4s

Maximum Size 1920px × 984px 416.12 MB

Additional Information / Shotlist Mohammad, or Bambino, arrived in the UK illegally early summer 2016. He’s waiting for his interview with the Home Office. In the meantime, he’s been provided accommodation and is living in a house in Newcastle-under-Lyme with another unaccompanied minor. A social worker stops by every day to see how they’re doing, take them to a nearby village to get halal meat etc…

Text on screen:
London 2016

Mohammad is 16 years old.
He left Sudan a year ago.

It took him and his 3 brothers
10 days to cross the Libyan desert
to Sabratah from where they took a boat to Europe.

Their dinghy ripped, his brothers all drowned.
Mohammad was rescued by the Red Cross.
From Italy, he headed to Calais in France.

Subtitles
I lived in the Jungle for 9 months, but it felt more like
10 or 11 years.
I used to think about my family a lot.
I thought I’d end up staying there forever.
It was hell.

Text on screen:
Calais 2015

Subtitles
If I’d spent one more month in the Jungle,
I’d have gone mad.
I was constantly thinking I hadn’t achieved my goal.
I felt insecure and abandoned, including by the police.
They treated us like enemies, rather than refugees seeking shelter in their country.
I went through a lot in the Jungle. I was often sick, but nobody helps anyone out.
I'm only 16 and my parents are so far away.
When I was sick, there was no one to take care of me,
no one to know I was crying alone in my room.

Sometimes, I wished I’d died in the sea
instead of being subjected to the hard conditions in the Jungle.

You can't even tell your
parents you live in the Jungle.

When my mum used to call me to ask how I was doing,
I lied and said I was in a safe place.
She never found out where I really was.
Living in Calais was like being in Africa.
It never felt like a European country, where people say
it’s safe.
I never felt I was living in a secure European country.
Even after arriving here in the UK, I kept having nightmares about the Jungle.

If you see a man laughing in the Jungle, you should know that, deep down inside, he’s carrying the world on his shoulders.
You can feel he’s lost all hope.

In that kind of world, you don’t feel human,
but like some kind of animal.
It’s like being in prison,
even if you’re totally free.
Lots of people went crazy.
The refugees fought among themselves,
the Sudanese, the Afghans,
and the Kurds, for example.
There were often fights
and sometimes someone would end up getting killed.

Text on screen:
Mohammad and another Sudanese minor hid on a truck and succeeded in getting across to the UK.

I feel completely safe in the UK,
And not like an outsider anymore.
I slept badly in
Calais, because I felt unsafe.
But I sleep really well here.
It’s as if I was living with my parents.

I’m living here in this house with my friend and we go to school.
I live in the UK now.
All I want is to have a life like everyone else.
I want to build my future,
I have a goal.

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